Winter break has come to a close. With only a few minutes before I retire and wake up a teacher, I must confess that the lazy and carefree version of myself needed to emerge and have his way for a couple of weeks. Strangely, at the end of most breaks when I was in college, I was bored and raring to go back to classes; I definitely don’t feel ready.

Part of it, surely, is because I came up with three separate projects that I want to work on, and I’d love some free time to sit down and tear into them.

1. I want to enter this graphic design/information presentation contest, headed up by my blog hero dy/dan. So far I have ideas for 2 of the 4 pieces of information that I want to include: (1) all the restaurants I’ve eaten at in NYC and (2) how my network of friends has grown since moving here. I’m also toying with music and something dealing with my move. Unfortunately the due date for the competition is this Sunday and I am going to be too busy to work on it.

2. I want to learn how to use SmartBoard Recorder and SmartBoard Notebook to create teaching videos while I’m at my apartment (read: no smartboard projector there), and then find a good website to upload them to.

3. I want to learn quantum mechanics using lectures by Leonard Susskind from Stanford (found on iTunesU). I’ve already watched 8 hours of it, and I’m relieved that I can understand everything up to this point.

Part of my non-desire to go to school, the whiney part of me thinks, is that I don’t want to wake up at 6:30am everyday and go to bed by 10:30pm everyday.

Strangely, after such a long break, I feel like I’ve forgotten how to teach: how to lesson plan, how to engage a class, how to act. I know, I know… it’s like riding a bicycle, and all that jazz, but I won’t feel comfortable about returning to the classroom until I actually get there. The one thing I know in the back of my head, even though my immediate emotions aren’t sharing in it, is that once I enter a classroom, I get into a groove. I just have to hold out until that happens. In 9 hours.